Dont Push!

by Rabbi Mendel Weinbach zt'l

Every time another Holocaust denier rears his ugly head our thoughts turn to those Jews who survived that great tragedy and lived to tell the true story of what happened.

While we mourn the death of millions of our brothers and sisters in the Holocaust we continue to be inspired by the tales of those who survived. Only G-d knows why some were chosen to be survivors while others perished. The story of each survivor is therefore one of miraculous Divine intervention.

One such survivor was a young girl at the time that she was taken to a death camp together with her family and neighbors. After days of sweating and thirsting in a sealed cattle car they were all anxious for a shower and a drink. When their deceitful captors led them to the disguised gas chambers they told them that they were being given an opportunity to shower. The women in this girls group desperately began pushing to get ahead in the line headed for the "showers". But she remembered being taught by her mother never to push others and time after time she remained at the end of the line. Finally the remaining women were sent off to a work camp and she survived the war.

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